Come and ‘Like’ The Chain Gang on Facebook

Some weeks ago I set up a Chain Gang Facebook page. I didn’t tell anybody about it because I wanted to experiment to find out what it can do, what it can’t do. What would be useful, and what would just be so much ‘social media’ guff – no use to man nor ornament.

A few people tripped over the page anyway, but now I’d like to invite everybody to ‘Like’ the Chain Gang on Facebook.

Here’s a basic introduction. Individuals have a ‘Profile’. Companies have a ‘Page’. Instead of becoming ‘Friends’ with a company, you ‘Like’ them. It enables you to comment, and to add photos, videos, links to interesting information, etc.

In time I hope we can all use it to find each other. If we all ‘Like’ the Chain Gang page we’ll be able to find the people that we cycled with in the Dordogne, or Tuscany, or Burgundy last Summer. Then we’ll be able to share our photos with each other, wherever they live on the Internet. If you use Flickr, Picasa, or WinkFlash, all of them allow you to generate a link which you can share with people via the Chain Gang Facebook page.

Also, I’m always looking for new information about cycling, about Italy, France, wine, or Chain Gang cyclers, and Facebook is the fastest way to share it. For example, since I wrote March’s newsletter Roberto Peixoto has sent me an entire gallery of photos of Tuscany. I’ll add them to our Flickr site, and no doubt some time in April I’ll write a blog about them and include them in our April Newsletter. But the minute I’ve finished adding them to our Flickr site I’ll put a quick link up on Facebook.

The more of us that ‘Like’ our page, the more useful it will be. Can I ask you a favour? Please would you find The Chain Gang on Facebook and ‘Like’ us? If you go to Facebook and ‘search’ for ‘The Chain Gang Cycle Tours’ you’ll find us easily enough. Together we can work out afterwards how much we want to share with each other or whether it’s useful, but I think it could be fun.

As soon as 25 people ‘like’ the page, Facebook allow you to implement some new and interesting features. 25 people is easy, except I don’t really want my friends and other Facebook users to join up just so that I can begin to implement new features. It’s for us, Chain Gang cyclers, to see what we can do with it, see if we want it, see if we find it either fun or useful.

If other people want to have a look, obviously that’s great, they’re welcome. But I’m hoping we’ll become primarily a community of people who loosely know each other and share some interests.

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